---
title: "A Cure for Relative Requires in React Native"
description: "Learn how to simplify your React Native project structure and eliminate long require paths with package.json names."
url: https://www.callstack.com/blog/a-cure-for-relative-requires-in-react-native
updated: 2026-10-24T14:25:37.938Z
---

# A Cure for Relative Requires in React Native

Learn how to simplify your React Native project structure and eliminate long require paths with package.json names.

_By Wojciech Szafraniec, Software Engineer @ Callstack · Published 2016-01-11 · Category: React Native_

Say goodbye to require(‘../../../../\`)

This is rather undocumented React Native feature so use with caution

When developing large React application, you usually want to split it into sub-projects so that you can share some logic between these targets (web, mobile) and keep your dependencies well organised.

It’s well known fact that \`npm link\` does not work with React Native yet, so almost everyone usually writes:

require(‘../../../core/todos/actions.js’)

## Project structure

Supposing you have the following structure of your project:

/package.json (name = @acme/umbrella)  
/src  
 /core  
   /package.json (name = @acme/core)  
   /todos  
 /mobile  
   /package.json (react-native dependency, name = @acme/mobile)  
   /config.js  
   /containers  
     /App.js  
  
and you start packager from root of your project:

./src/mobile/node\_modules/react-native/packager/packager.sh

you can reference all files from \`core\` or \`mobile\` folder by the package.json name.

That is — **as long as there’s package.json inside a folder** (it does not need to be inside node\_modules)**, packager will make it accessible by its name.**

## Summary

So, to sum up, instead of writing:

// mobile/containers/App.js  
const todos = require(‘../../../core/todos’);  
const config = require(‘../config’);  


you could just:

// mobile/containers/App.js  
const todos = require(‘@acme/core/todos’);  
const config = require(‘@acme/mobile/config’);  


or even

const todos = require(‘[@acme/umbrella](https://twitter.com/acme/umbrella)/src/core/todos’);

but that’s rather ugly (though it shows that you can also reference by top-most package.json name either).

To make it working inside web target, use Webpack for instance and simply alias these folders.

How nice is that!

> Note: Confirmed to work as of React Native 0.17